


Loading Screen

by WordyBirdiePoe



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Body Horror, F/M, This is weird, Written in 2nd person, eldritch horror, the Batter is creepy and terrifying in an existential way, the Batter is the player's puppet and the strings are a bit more literal than he might like, this fic is almost 3 years old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-03-31 22:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13984794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordyBirdiePoe/pseuds/WordyBirdiePoe
Summary: The Title Screen fades to black, and you find yourself really getting into this game right from the start...





	Loading Screen

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this back in 2015 and surprisingly don't hate it? Also it has both delighted and horrified several of my friends, so I thought I'd share here.
> 
> (I'm fixing a few things as I reformat it from the Word document, but otherwise this is unbeta'd; tense might be all over the place.)

Something is wrong.

The screen goes black. Your laptop’s cooling fan growls and grinds like a caged beast, and the smell of sparking copper wiring and burning plastic hooks into your nostrils. You depress the power button with your thumb in a desperate bid to keep the device from melting into your lap.

A jolt rockets up your left arm, threading up and through your shoulder blades and down your right arm, which now grips at the casing to the laptop with a strength that makes the plastic creak and groan.

Your outstretched arms anchor you to the smoking whirring hunk of hardware like a tow cable to a car dangerously close to toppling off a cliff. The blackness before you stretches out beyond the boundaries of the screen and curls into the corners of your vision.

The cable snaps. Bars of keyboard casing snap off in each hand and you’re falling downward. 

You don’t land so much as come to a slow, gradual stop in your descent into the blackness. When you testingly move your feet, whatever is beneath you feels solid enough.

You walk.

You don’t notice the temperature of your surroundings until you notice that you haven’t noticed. A chill drops over you like a lead threaded blanket, causing your knees to buckle slightly. How long and how far have you been walking?

Your palms prickle and you bring them up closer to your face to investigate. You are still clutching a cracked black bar of plastic casing in each hand and try as you might you cannot will your fingers to pry away from the dark shapes. Something not unlike spider silk flashes along each of your fingertips before darting off into the darkness, and you feel a pulling sensation.

You pull back.

This may have been a mistake.

You seemingly tug a vague white shape out from the endless dark void, like cotton from an overstuffed seam. It’s difficult to tell if the shape is very small, or simply at a distance from where you stand. Regardless of your perception, the shape grows, stretching and reaching as if being roused from a deep sleep. You recoil when the white mass begins to take on a recognizably human-like shape, though the length of the limbs and size of the head aren’t quite right…

Nothing is right about this.

Wrong.

It’s all _so very wrong._

An arm is lifted, and you find yourself being tugged back towards the figure by the imperceptible threads at your fingertips. You gasp and stumble forwards at the sharp sensation, nearly butting into the ominous shape you may or may not have called into existence. You lift your head, eyes wide and chest heaving with uncertainty and discomfort.

The figure is not unnaturally tall, but rather like a minimalist mannequin in that it was completely smooth and featureless and _very still._ What you can only assume is its faceless head cranes downwards, as if to study your expression. Its torso briefly ballooned out before returning to its previous shape in a very mechanical way, and you realize that this thing is trying to mimic your breathing. 

Said breath catches in your throat when the surface of the head-like protrusion begins to roil like a pot of water over a fire. Eyes, noses, ears – all bubble up like bright blisters against the stark white face before sinking back down. Before too long it seems to figure out where the ears are meant to be, as two shapes cement themselves at either side of the head in a more natural formation – making the utter chaos that was the rest of its visage that much more jarring. The figure seems to have given up on a nose, and instead settled on blinking many cold yellow eyes into existence to serve in the stead of a proper face.

With wet, squishing sounds, the globes of color darted and rolled about in their affixed positions, pinpricks of the void serving as pupils and focusing on nothing until your haggard breathing went just a small note above being imperceptible. Eyes of different shape and depth all focused on you as the figure slowly, heavily knelt in front of you.

The stumps that were its arms nudge and press at your face, again reminding you of a mannequin in their cold polished texture. Tendrils wriggle their way from the rounded nubs and fan along your cheeks, poking at the corners of your eyes, the folds and creases of your ears, the contours of your nose…

The figure’s eyes narrow as the tendrils thicken into a vague idea of fingers and tug at your lips. Concentration? Contemplation? Confusion? Frustration? You could not begin to guess what its expression was meant to convey. The eyes closest to the figure’s ‘chin’ pull up and back as if an unseen hand was scooping a hole into the pliable dough that was its face, and the void poured out from it like oil from a pipe.

The two of you sit for some time like this – the figure’s newly formed hands and fingers cradling your face as its own churned out an inky blackness that you could not discern from the rest of the void by sight, but which most definitely pooled around your knees. You begin to sink into it, or felt as if you were, as the frigid oil noticeably moves further up your captive frame.

A dull humming sound meets your ears, not unlike what your laptop produced when it had been left on for too long. The figure itself thrums mechanically as its face once again contorts and mushes in onto itself, stemming the flow of the void but not stalling your descent. Rivulets of black run down the figure’s chin and the column of its throat, pooling at its collarbone before breaking off into dozens of smaller streams that race down its torso in lines. Several more eyes sink back into its face as what could pass for a mouth begins to take on a more solid shape, appearing as a hard dark line against stark white. 

The thrumming intensifies, and the figure visibly and violently shakes. By extension of its grip on your face, it feels as though your teeth might very well vibrate out of your skull. 

The thrumming begins to sound more and more like the grinding and growling of your laptop’s cooling fan. You sank into the void up to your neck before the figure’s mouth fell open, a small wet mass of black lolling out like a tongue and the unearthly sound that issued forth was nearly deafening.

It is screaming. You both are.

 

When you next become aware of yourself, you are alone. The wet clinging void is gone, feeling instead more like solid ground beneath you once more. You move to push yourself up into a sitting position, finding the bars of plastic still held in a white-knuckled grip in your hands.

You feel the slack on your fingertips go taut once again.

The figure before you seems to be dressed now – all straight lines and distinct boundaries of the void coming together to form stripes and solids. Very basic, but very distinguishable. From what, you did not know. It kneels, and you swore you could see musculature flexing beneath the lines and planes of polished white. It takes your face in its hands once more, and they don’t feel quite so wrong this time. They have the correct amount of fingers, at the very least, and feel cool against your heated skin. The figure’s head still sports two ordinary ears and a thin mouth pressed into a hard line, but its eyes are absent for now.

A hand slowly drops from one side of your face, dragging heavily down your neck, smoothing over your shoulder, tracing along the length of your arm…

Six eyes pop out to stare wildly at you when its hand meets yours, plucking at the unseen strings with what could only be described as increasing annoyance. Nails you had never noticed before press threatening crescents to the side of your face, and its mouth splits open to a small issue of blackness that tapers back off into a lolling tongue. Rows of teeth that are all at once too straight and too sharp can be seen just behind the figure’s grimacing lips. It exhales, cold air fanning your face as the eyes narrow dangerously.

A sound wells up in the figure’s throat – a cracked, static filled groan that makes your vision go dim. Images flash through your mind – orange buildings, dimly lit mine shafts, pale nervous men, rings of light…

It all makes you sick to your stomach.

And then

White.

Pure

Clean

Nothing.

... Was this not better? Surely it would be a step up from this void the two of you inhabited. The color, the noise, the oppressive hum of existence – it all had to go. It was better that way.

But you couldn’t do it alone.

When your vision returns, the figure has caught up both of your wrists and its head is cocked to one side. A question. The only one you would get.

You nod.

Your hands let go of the bars, and the tension goes slack.

The burning eyes turn up in what must be an expression of pleasure, and the figure smooths its hands along your wrists and up your arms to your shoulders, pulling you forward so that the palms of your hands press against the broad expanse of its chest. It presses out against your fingers in an odd mimicry of breath once again, and the figure makes a curiously fond sound.

It gives your shoulders a purposeful squeeze. You hear the command in your mind and the keyboard at your fingertips.

_Enter your name._

_\--_

_You have been assigned to a being called “The Batter.” The Batter has an important mission. Be sure that it’s accomplished. We will let you out in Zone 0. Good luck._

**Author's Note:**

> (I'd love feedback on this if you have thoughts to share.)


End file.
